Feed Your Soul with Stories
Beyond your own memory, the best thing to have in your database is access to other people’s stories.
Why?
Because stories captivate. Good stories endure. Classic literature teaches lessons that no single lifetime of living can contain.
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies.
The man who never reads lives only one.”
––George R.R. Martin
No one can read everything. Of making books there is no end. How to pick one?
One at a time.
Books can offer anyone who thinks about what they read or watch a cultural and trans-cultural education that extends beyond boundaries of time and space, extending even beyond the pages of recorded history.
Reading without thinking is like eating without digesting what you ate.
Current books take the culture’s pulse and temperature––indications of health or sickness.
Some are dead and some are living
Reading, I have learned things from people I have never met. People I will not meet. People I cannot meet because the people who wrote the book are dead.
Or because, some people never lived except as characters in a book.
Still, readers can benefit from both the real and imagined experiences of others. Get in the skin, the shoes, the mind of a character like themselves, or a character nothing like themselves.
And learn something.
As a reader, perspective enlarges and can shift enough to see situations from another person’s viewpoint.
More data. More self-awareness. More compassion.
To teach. To inform. To entertain. Most of all, to affect people’s thinking, books have inherent value.
And so do movies. Because you and I are wired to connect to stories.
While reading, I think of other readers too.
Not every book is a work of art, great literature, or of lasting value.
Not every movie is a film worth preserving.
Not every book or film is worth reading or viewing. Not even once, let alone again.
On this website, I serve as curator. I don’t read everything. I don’t read fast. I don’t limit reading to current best-sellers.
I read careful, like an investigator. I seek truth wherever it may be found in almost any story.
Whether watching a movie or reading a book, the subconscious mind seeks to solve other people’s problems, like mysteries.
A Media Digest of Story
Just as the magazine Reader’s Digest made popular the idea of condensing books and articles, when I write about a book I have read or a movie I have watched, I try to describe the information, ideas, and principles that help me to better understand the world you and I live in.
Then I write a footnote to stories that connect some dots, offer helps to process real problems, and encourage growth. Or at least offer another perspective.
If you like books and movies, follow me down the rabbit hole of story.
I have read books and watched movies for decades. Old movies, new movies, old books and recent releases. I love connecting people to books that may offer practical help, educate, or entertain.
